The military in Sri Lanka said Tuesday that 9,100 Tamil Tiger rebels have surrendered themselves to the government and most of them have been sent to rehabilitation centers after proper legal procedure.
Military spokesman Udaya Nanayakkara told a group of foreign journalists visiting the Internal Displaced Person (IDP) camps in Vavuniya that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) members fled to government controlled areas among civilians and surrendered themselves to the authorities.
"Most of the former LTTE members have been sent to different rehabilitation centers after being produced to the court," Nanayakkara said.
The spokesman said the civilians were brought to different IDP camps in Vavunia, about 240 km north of the capital Colombo, after coming through a screening process in Omanthai, a small town north of Vavunia.
The last Sri Lankan Army check point which divided the government and LTTE controlled areas used to be in Omanthai for many years.
Nanayakkara said all the civilians who had fled to government controlled areas have been registered and the government is managing to help the IDPs to find their lost family members.
The government said about 260,000 civilians are now being accommodated in 24 IDP camps in Vavuniya.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has promised to resettle most of the civilians to their original villages within 180 days.
Sri Lanka's 30-year civil war came to a conclusion last week with the total defeat of the LTTE.
Claiming discrimination at the hands of the majority Sinhalese dominated governments, the LTTE began to fight for an independent Tamil homeland in the north and east since the 1980s, resulting in the killing of more than 100,000 people in Asia's longest civil war.
(Xinhua News Agency May 27, 2009)
